Longest downturn for Eurozone; Rich-poor divide accelerating; Are you schooled or are you educated?; Angelina's jolly good act; Print your own solar panel

1 Longest downturn for Eurozone (Graeme Wearden in The Guardian) The eurozone has slumped into its longest recession ever, after economic activity across the region fell for the sixth quarter in a row. Economic output across the single currency area fell by 0.2% in the first three months of 2013. France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands all saw their economies shrink as the economic crisis in the eurozone continued to hit its largest economies.

Eurostat's figures showed that the eurozone economy has contracted by 1% over the last year, putting further pressure on leaders as unemployment climbs to new record highs. The 0.2% contraction in the first quarter was an improvement on the 0.6% drop recorded between October and December, but analysts warned that the eurozone's economic outlook is darkening.

"What seems incontrovertible, on this evidence, is that the member-states of the euro zone are on the wrong track," commented Stephen Lewis, chief economist at Monument Securities. "The costs of the zone's one-size-fits-all strategy are becoming brutally apparent."

"The bottom line is that both the German and French economies, which together account for half of the eurozone's output, are in the doldrums," said Nick Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy. "Add in the persistent recession in the Netherlands, which accounts for a further 6.5% of eurozone GDP, and the core and semi-core of the eurozone are in significantly worse shape than a year ago."

2 Rich-poor divide accelerating (BBC) The gap between rich and poor widened more in the three years to 2010 than in the previous 12 years, the OECD group of industrialised nations has said. It says the richest 10% of society in the 33 OECD countries received 9.5 times that of the poorest in terms of income, up from nine times in 2007. Those with the biggest gaps included the US, Turkey, Mexico and Chile.

The OECD says that if governments do not stop cutting back on welfare support this gap will grow wider. The Paris-based group is generally in favour of free-market policies, but has recently become more vocal in support of more generous social provision to soften the impact of the economic downturn of the past few years.

The OECD's secretary general, Angel Gurria, said: "These worrying findings underline the need to protect the most vulnerable in society, especially as governments pursue the necessary task of bringing public spending under control." Countries where the gap was least pronounced were mainly in the north of Europe, with Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Slovenia the most egalitarian societies.

3 Are you schooled or are you educated? (Jonathan Jansen in Johannesburg Times) I have bad news for you. While most of you have been schooled, few of you have been educated. There is a difference.  Those of you who have had schooling followed the rules of the school, attended your classes, did your homework, wrote the tests, passed, and received a certificate of some kind.

You were, in a sense, institutionalised. But you can be schooled and still be a barbarian. You can frame and hang your certificates against a wall and still be uneducated. You can attend many years of formal schooling and still be reckless. I see this all the time. School, in this sense, is therefore not primary school or high school; it is all forms of institutionalisation, including college and university, in which you are schooled to behave.

These mechanical routines that lock students in classrooms and compress information into their heads in limited periods have morphed into an industry where past exam papers are rehearsed, class notes are memorised and test questions "scoped" to ensure as many of those in attendance has possible achieve some passing grade.

An educated man or woman is someone who learns, first of all, to doubt. An educated person, as opposed to one merely schooled, is guided by values such as humility. It is this deep understanding that you are not better than the person you despise or curse, and that very often you are subject to the same weaknesses (such as prejudice) as the one who offends you. When education teaches and nurtures a humble spirit it prepares the ground for reconciliation; it creates, further, a foundation for leadership that acknowledges mutual vulnerability and therefore prepares leaders who are capable of solving complex human problems.

To be educated is to have the courage to act on principle and not on the basis of ethnic or political or religious partisanship.  Yes, friends will be lost, tenders forfeited and sometimes even family bonds severed. Yet an educated person rises above the passions of the moment. What should matter really is how many young people obtain distinctions in life through the capacity for care, courage, commitment and contrition.

4 Angelina’s jolly good act (Khaleej Times) If there’s one disease that truly haunts people — that generates an acute sense of helplessness — it’s cancer. Time and again, a person’s genetic make-up has been scientifically shown to play a big role in triggering abnormal cell growth.  Still, many people continue to remain in denial, choosing to not think about the worst-possible outcome, till they actually have to face it. And this is highly prevalent attitude that Hollywood actress-director Angelina Jolie has tried to discourage women from having.

Jolie, in an op-ed in New York Times, revealed that she got a double mastectomy done to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer. Jolie’s mother, actress-producer Marcia Bertrand, died at the age of 56 after battling ovarian cancer for a decade. And when Jolie found out that she carried the ‘faulty’ gene that made her 87 and 50% vulnerable to getting breast and ovarian cancer respectively, she decided to go for a rather drastic step: double mastectomy. According to the Academy Award winner, she made this decision — which, according to her, did not adversely impact her femininity -- to ensure that her six children did not lose her to breast cancer.

Jolie’s decision to share her story has been vociferously lauded by cancer organisations and breast cancer survivors worldwide. Her article was not just a testament to the fact that celebrities with fame and wealth are also mere mortals, it will also encourage women to take such this radical preventive measure. One in eight women in the world suffers from breast cancer, but for those at a high risk of developing the disease, preventive mastectomy can potentially save lives. 

5 Print your own solar panel (Miles Godfrey in Sydney Morning Herald) Australian scientists have found a way to print large but extremely lightweight and flexible solar panels like money. World-leading scientists at the CSIRO said the A3-sized panels, which are created by laying a liquid photovoltaic ink onto thin, flexible plastic could soon mean everyone has the ability to print their own solar panels at home. "It would definitely be feasible to do that," said CSIRO materials scientist Dr Scott Watkins.

Experts from the University of Wollongong and Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital are already testing the idea of printing human body parts, such as replacement organs and tissues. CSIRO's solar panels, which have been in development for five years with a team of experts at Monash and Melbourne universities, are attracting interest from big companies that see a wide range of applications. 

Near-term uses include putting the panels, similar in feel to a glossy magazine page, onto laptops or mobile phones - offering an extra hour of power once the inbuilt battery dies. They could also be printed on to skyscraper windows or roofs. The ability to print solar panels is not new in itself - but what is new is the ability to make them as large and powerful as the Australian version.

6 Conditions for India’s Olympic dreams (Romit Guha in The Wall Street Journal) The International Olympic Committee said its talks with a sports delegation from India this week were “successful,” but the country’s Olympic Association must change its constitution and hold fresh elections if its suspension from the Olympic body is to be revoked. The IOC suspended the Indian Olympic Association on Dec. 4 for violating the Olympic Charter, which stipulates that its members must not be older than 70 and tenures should be time-bound; two stipulations that India has ignored. V.K. Malhotra, for example, who headed the IOA until December, is 82 years old. He has also run the country’s archery governing body for more than 30 years.

The IOC also claimed government interference in the IOA’s December elections. It refused to recognize the elections, which India pressed ahead with despite warnings by the IOC’s ethics panel against the candidature of Lalit Bhanot, who has been accused of graft in the organizing of the Commonwealth Games. Mr. Bhanot, who is out on bail and has denied any wrongdoing, was elected secretary general of the IOA.

The suspension means that Indian athletes cannot compete under the national flag at Olympic events and aren’t eligible for IOC funding. The IOC’s focus on improving administration and ethics is likely to be welcomed by India’s sporting community, which has long complained the country’s sports bodies are mismanaged, mainly as they are helmed by politicians rather than sportspeople. India won six medals–none gold–at the London Olympics, its biggest ever haul but a poor return for a country of 1.2 billion people.